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An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have successfully restored and, in some cases, enhanced decision-making ability in brain-damaged monkeys on cocaine by connecting a prosthetic device to their brains. 'In the study, the scientists trained five monkeys to match multiple images on a computer screen until they were correct 70 to 75 percent of the time. First, an image appeared on the screen, which the animals were trained to select using a hand-controlled cursor. The screen then went blank for up to two minutes, followed by the reappearance of two to eight images, including the initial one, on the same screen. When the monkeys correctly chose the image they were shown first, the electronic prosthetic device recorded the pattern of neural pulses associated with their decision by employing a multi-input multi-output nonlinear (MIMO) mathematical model, developed by researchers at the University of Southern California. In the next phase of the study, a drug known to disrupt cognitive activity, cocaine, was administered to the animals to simulate brain injury. When the animals repeated the image-selection task, their decision-making ability decreased 13 percent from normal. However, during these "drug sessions," the MIMO prosthesis detected when the animals were likely to choose the wrong image and played back the previously recorded "correct" neural patterns for the task. According to the study findings, the MIMO device was exceedingly effective in restoring the cocaine-impaired decision-making ability to an improved level of 10 percent above normal, even when the drug was still present and active.'"

No, but I'd imagine this might have applications in people who have suffered brain injuries. It sounds like they can essentially use some kind of resonance effect, so if this can be replicated for people who can physically walk but can "no longer remember how" then it's potentially useful. However, if they're simply playing back a pre-recorded action then there is limited application, it's not going to revive lost speech centers for example, and extensive physiotherapy which helps to develop new pathways

The device is able to read neural activity, and playback neural activity. Lets say the speech center is lost, when this technology is a little more mature you could pump speech center communications to the different parts of the brain while offloading the actual processing to a device.

Looks like it we might just see cyberneticly augmented intelligence in our lifetimes after all.

I did wonder about speech, but if you're simply playing back the neural activity that generates "hello" then you have to tell the device to do it, and giving the command "say(hello)" might as well lead to a speech synthesizer. Walking, however, is a repetitive activity that could be controlled by this for minutes or hours with one command.

"I'll dial for both of us, Rick said, and led her back into the bedroom. There, at her console, he dialed 594: pleased acknowledgment of husband's superior wisdom in all matters. On his own console he dialed for a creative and fresh attitude toward his job, although this he hardly needed; such was his habitual, innate approach without recourse to Penfield artificial brain stimulation.

The feed back device didn't improve the monkey's intelligence, it simply undid some of the damage the crack did to them.At best its a retraining aid, and its not clear if it had any long term effect after discontinuing the feedback.

Since each feedback profile was learned from the monkey itself, there's no indication that you could apply that pattern toother monkeys, or the undamaged monkeys to make them learn quicker.

But hey, good on those researchers to induce brain damage with cocaine so that no physical

The feed back device didn't improve the monkey's intelligence, it simply undid some of the damage the crack did to them.

Really? Not even going to RTFS?

According to the study findings, the MIMO device was exceedingly effective in restoring the cocaine-impaired decision-making ability to an improved level of 10 percent above normal, even when the drug was still present and active.'"

Emphasis mine. Your other points may be valid, but this technique certainly did more than just undo the effects of the drug.

You've got it backwards. The Occupy movement has had a significant real world impact. It brought the issue of effective tax rates for the rich into the presidential race, including the obscenely low 15% tax rate paid by Romney.

Now that Mitt Romney's confirmed what we've long suspected about his effective federal tax rate -- "It's probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything" -- we have a fact worth contextualizing. Though it could easi

Two or three times, yes... but I decided it's really not for me. I find the "high" doesn't last long; and there was significant impairment in my ability to rationalise decisions (especially those relating to social behaviour - similar problem to alcohol but without the messiness and stumbling all over the place)

Those monkeys must have been damn near overdose, or given the drug at high doses over a long period of time to result in loss of cognitive functionality at that base level.

I don't think they actually CAUSED brain damage using cocaine. They simulated it using cocaine. See the bit I wrote above about impairment in my ability to rationalise.

That said, fuck the cocaine. Where's the damn control group where the regular monkeys used the prosthetic device to help them remember more quickly which decision to make? When you miss a control group that big, the study is hogwash.

Caesar, one of our lab monkeys on cocaine with an electronically-enhanced brain, has escaped from the biotech facility and stole a truck full of our latest brain prosthetic devices and all our reserves of experimental hard drugs. He has liberated the zoo gorillas and baboons, and supplied them with electronic brain-enhancers and narcotics. The war on us humans has already begun and is raging as I'm writing this.
...
The end is near...We are dying...Crack-head monkeys have just broken into my office....Goo

Reading the article this device sounds more like a memory extension than an intelligence booster. It just recorded the correct answers and played them back later. Still awesome, just not in a Planet of the apes kind of way.

If you are proposing that the scientists should use humans instead, because humans can consent, and animals cannot, then by all means! Drive yourself down there and fill in the forms before the public notary, and get into the hospital gown.

If, however, you are just creaming out your ass because scientists are doing science, and it makes you feel 'ow swo bwad fwor de widdle monkwies', and would rather that humans live in the stone age than experiment on other lieforms to larn how living things work, and in s

If you are proposing that the scientists should use humans instead, because humans can consent, and animals cannot, then by all means! Drive yourself down there and fill in the forms before the public notary, and get into the hospital gown.

If, however, you are just creaming out your ass because scientists are doing science, and it makes you feel 'ow swo bwad fwor de widdle monkwies', and would rather that humans live in the stone age than experiment on other lieforms to larn how living things work, and in so doing, push the boundries of scentific knowledge and medical technologies, then kind find a fire, pour gasoline all over yourself, and step into it.

Great post!The thought that always crosses my mind when I read a label that says: NOT TESTED ON ANIMALS...is always:"Great. They're testing this stuff on ME."

This is more scientific FRAUD, committed by sociopaths who enjoy torturing animals.

What makes you assume the monkeys didn't thoroughly enjoy the experience?I can say from experience that taking cocaine is not entirely unpleasant (I wouldn't do it again; but the two or three times I tried it, it was a lot of fun for a short period of time; followed by disappointment that the feelings go away so quickly)

And besides, even if it WAS committed by sociopaths who enjoy torturing animals, that doesn't make it scientific fraud (as long as they correctly recorded results and didn't distort anything